Let’s not be fooled by their innocent appearance.
The French language is populated with innocuous metaphors with licentious undertones.
A natural candor sometimes leads us to say them without suspecting the naughty meaning behind it.
These expressions sometimes give rise to laughter, when an interlocutor cannot help but think of their saucy second meaning.
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Did you know that the
"three-piece suit"
can also surreptitiously refer to the male genitalia? This double meaning would be due to the ancestral resentment of the French towards the English. We would have found this linguistic means to make fun of them and their masculine suit of which they were so proud. As for the expression
"to take back the hair of the beast"
, it originally designated a second intimate relationship (from
"to take the hair of the beast"
, in the sense:
"to have an intimate relationship"
). It was not until the 17th century that its meaning widened to say
"to be in good shape again"
,
"to get back in the saddle"
, notes Agnès Pierron in
200 Funny Erotic Expressions That We Use Every Day Without Knowing It
(Le Robert, 2016).
Will you do a faultless test on the sulphurous expressions of the French language?